Architecture & Art Library Blog

Join us every first Friday of the month during First Friday Studio Sessions at Blaffer Art Museum. Our pop-up library & book sale will just be one of many exciting activities, so come check it out! Refreshments and light snacks will be provided.

The William R. Jenkins Architecture, Design and Art library welcomes the Fall 2019 semester with two brand new rare books exhibits! On the first floor, a collections of books and magazines featuring artists and works from the Maeght Foundation can be found on the south wing exhibit case. The Maeght Foundation is one of France’s most renowned art institutions and their artists include stars such as Miro and Giacometti. Also on view on the upper mezzanine area are four collotype of draped models from a 1902 book titled Draperies in Action by Charles Schnek.

Come meet, eat & greet Emmanuel Bamtefa during his reception at the Architecture, Design, and Art Library May 9th at 12pm. He will be talking about his new exhibit CULTURE FOR THE PEOPLE on view August-October 2019.

“As an artist, I look to introduce life of a certain people that is not familiar to the western world. I want to introduce people to a major people’s way of life through imagery and abstraction using different mediums.

In this exhibition, “Culture for the People” I will focus on abstraction of reality from today’s society coming from my upbringing with the things I learnt from my perspective to things that I felt was necessary to talk about.”

I’m pleased to announce that Edith Villasenor has joined the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library staff. Edith earned a BA in in Art History from UH and worked in the Jenkins Library as a student shelver from 2014-2016. While a student she served as Vice President of the Blaffer Student Association and the Treasurer of the Jenkins Library Ambassadors. Edith has worked as a docent at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and as a volunteer at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Lawndale Art Center. She interned in the Blaffer Art Museum’s Education Department and as an archival and curatorial assistant at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum. In her new role as library supervisor, Edith will supervise the student shelvers as well as the Jenkins Library Student Ambassador program. She will also be heavily involved in outreach activities and research instruction targeted at visual arts students enrolled in the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts. Edith may be reached at evillasenor@uh.edu or at 713-743-2340. Please join me in welcoming her back to UH.

This comprehensive five-volume set from Yale University Press is now part of the Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Collection in the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library. Patrons may contact cwessinger@uh.edu to schedule a time to view this definitive work.

On view in the William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library until November 2017. The artist, Isaac Farley, is now in the third year of an MFA program in painting.

My work is a form of storytelling. I want to tell stories of the lives of everyday people, like my family that is made up of people who were and are workers, either on ranches or in factories, and their desires, struggles, their triumphs, and tribulations. Stories are rooted in oral traditions and cave paintings and are the basis of human history. When I try to tell a story without words, I think in images. These images are influenced by movies, photography, and other art, and are most readily translated onto a two dimensional surface.

Often the work deals with America. Not so much what America is or what it was, but the ideal, and myth of America. America, the land of equal opportunity, where the truth is spoken, justice is fair and even, and where people live as they choose instead of what others impose on them.

Duality appears often in my work as innate and inborn opposing or balancing forces. People are simultaneously advanced and primitive, capable of great acts of kindness and cruelty, with the ability to create both great art and terrible destruction.

Materials from the German artist Wolf Vostell’s Vietnam Sinfonie oder Désastres de la Guerra (Vietnam Symphony or Disasters of the War) are on display in the Architecture and Art Library’s upper mezzanine. This piece was performed at the Galerie Van de Loo in Munich in 1972. Vostell is known for his role in the Fluxus art movement in the late 1950s in Europe. He was the founder of the European Happening scene and was one of the first video and installation artists.

Art Revolution: Women Artists from Around the World

On display in the south wing are books dedicated to groundbreaking women artists from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. These women challenge traditional assumptions and engage us in conversations that were previously unthinkable through their creative work in video art, photography, performance art, paintings, textiles, sculptures, room installations, drawings, etchings, collages and beyond. This exhibit highlights many different art movements including Hannah Höch’s work as a Dada artist in the Weimar period, Carolee Schneemann’s Fluxus’ work, Ana Medieta’s involvement in the Body art movement, Helen Marten’s contemporary art earning her the 2016 Turner Prize, Germaine Arnaktauyok’s work stemming from her Inuk childhood, Lorna Simpson’s Conceptual Photography and avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama’s installations.

Fluorescent Lessons is on view from July to August 2017. Bydalek is a senior painting major at the University of Houston. Ms. Bydalek’s color palette was inspired by the pictorial artist Wayne Thiebaud, known for painting cakes. The artist also plays around with her memories and giving them a final twist.

Leah Bydalek’s art is on display in the William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library through August.

Artist’s statement:

I love it when the “truth” of a thing can be turned on its head to yield a novel experience. It shows us that perceptions are malleable and that people have the potential to change. This is the meeting point of the familiar and the unknown the beautiful and the disgusting the docile and the disobedient.

Interested in working for a museum? Join us for a friendly conversation with museum professional Javier Sanchez Martinez and learn about his career and curatorial research. Refreshments will be served.